Setting up a drip email campaign with MailChimp

This weekend I spent some time working on Post Kudos, the online and mobile app that makes it easy to collect video testimonials.  One of the features I wanted to add was the ability to set up an automatic drip email campaign. 

Once a user created their account on Post Kudos I wanted to:

• Send them an email upon registration
• Send them an email 2 days later giving them some creative ideas on how to ask for testimonials
• Send an email 5 days after that with another useful tip
• Send them an email 14 days after their original registration asking for their feedback
• And have them signed up for our monthly newsletter

Here is how you can go about making that happen.  Step 1 for me was getting them in to MailChimp.  I used the Ruby gem gibbon: https://github.com/amro/gibbon

gb = Gibbon::API.new("you_api_key")
gb.lists.subscribe({:id => "your_list_id", :email => {:email => self.email}, :merge_vars => {:FNAME => "#{self.name}"}, :double_optin => false})

Next step, to setup my drip emails. 

In MailChimp you can set this up using Autoresponders.

You can then set when a particular autoresponder is triggered.

Send:  [2]   [day(s)]   [after]  [sign-up]

You can even set the time of day it gets sent which is nifty.

Once your autoresponder is made, hover over it and there is an option that says create email.

A couple more clicks and you are done.

Create an autoresponder for each email that you want to send, and when you want to send it.